328	THE   RISE   OF   ITALIAN   FASCISM
obtained they lost sight of their limitations, and socialism
by remaining local and provincial became the victim of its
own success. It went so far as to make a virtue of its faults.
It was no longer only the old Italy, but socialism itself, the
socialism of Reggio Emilia, which far a da se.1 There was
no point in considering the problem of the state, -which
supplied credits, grants and public works on demand.
c Here/ explained the socialist chiefs, ' we are already in
power. If the whole of Italy becomes a Reggio Emilia
the revolution will be made.' This c socialism in a single
province ' lost in breadth what it gained in depth ; and
breadth for socialism is not a matter of mere dimensions,
but forms part of its very essence. The rate of its spread
decides its nature and its destiny. Through its ignorance or
neglect of the peasants of Apulia and the herdsmen of
Sardinia it lost contact with the nation and with the reality
of socialism. It lost too the sound knowledge that none of
its work would last while the 4 oases of socialism 5 were still
isolated in a desert whose sands might at any moment
submerge them. This kind of socialism not only fails to
lead to revolution, but risks losing all its conquests, as it
did in Italy. The real essence of local and gradual action
is to keep in touch with the state on the one hand and to
further the aims of socialism on the other. In the absence
of this twofold outlet the political capacity, to use Proudhon's
phrase, that the working class develops in its own institutions
is lost to the community. The Italian socialists were utterly
incapable of relating their ideals to the tasks imposed on
them by circumstances.
Through this lack of perspective a prodigious quantity of
devotion and human material, far superior to that behind
many other political or religious movements, was wasted,
and the chosen, people, who had already arrived at the
threshold of the new city, were disarmed and vanquished.
The socialists of the extreme left, on the other hand,
invoked at every step their final aim ofc proletarian revolu-
tion *. On principle everything was sacrificed to this. For
them there was no question as to whether their aim was
consonant with the general interest; it was an accepted
1 * Will act on its own,' a phrase which appeared during the Risorgimento,
expressing independence of outside help.